Slashdot Mirror
The WorldForge Project Celebrates Three Years!
cyanide writes "Well it has been three years since The WorldForge Project was first announced on Slashdot as an effort to develop open source Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORG ? ). Back then we were calling ourselves 'Altima', but since then we've released our first game, Acorn, and are now working on our next release, Mason. The project really is thriving now, and I'd love to see some new blood join us. "
perhaps this is a silly question, but if the MMOG is open source, wouldn't this open the gates for a ton of cheating?
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fight global cooling
The site is choking..
Where cheating becomes a problem is where the computer-skill is better than human-skill. An example of this was Quake and its auto-aimers (once the source was opened). But with these types of games, the game basically comes down to intelligence, and human intelligence will win out over computer intelligence more often than not, so cheating isn't desirable. There are exceptions: e.g. in a strategy game where you have to balance resources, you may want to hack the client to do cost-benefit analyses for you. But for RPG's especially, the computer won't help you out much.
The other area where cheating could be a problem is where the server gives you information that you shouldn't have, e.g. the location of enemies. This is actually pretty hard to get around unless you put a lot of intelligence in the server, which would slow it down a lot. But for these types of games it probably won't be TOO bad.
For the past 2 years, WorldForge has been able to provide for all of its own infrastructural needs. We have been experimenting with SourceForge for a few weeks, and it has some nice features yet may be too limited for our future needs. Should we continue use of SourceForge for functions not yet provided by the WorldForge infrastructure, or should we strive to provide those same functions under our own control, ourselves? Would it be worth setting up the SourceForge software on a WorldForge infrastructure server for purposes of managing the sub-projects within WorldForge? Definitely something to think about this weekend.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
I'm nominally a member of worldforge ... more like I hang around them all the time on irc, while my hobby projects that do directly involve them get pushed down on my project stack. There's plenty of disagreement on how to best prevent cheating, but much of it boils down to this: closed source hasn't prevented cheating in other MOG's (I like how we're boiling down the acronym from the unwieldy MMORPG to MOG -- don't really need the "massively" anymore, that's implied). Given the inevitability of failure here, the prospect of cheating needs to be treated more as a policy approach than anything else.
;) Finally, if the folks who wrote the protocol code are among the GPL zealots of WF, then it might be politically infeasable to go with a "closed one-off" approach.
One approach is to make the client dumb -- basically just a display for its inputs, the server only sends you what you need to see. Cheating is still possible here, but it'd be an impressive hack.
Another approach is that a protocol codec might be made closed source, and with a few clever techniques, you can send "booby trap" packets that flag cheaters if they are ever responded to by a client (also requiring a closed protocol codec at the other end). This isn't foolproof, and might indeed turn out to be a useless measure. But hey, we can always lock 'em up for circumventing, right?
Bottom line, cheaters exist for open and closed source games, and WF will be no exception. WF can provide means to catch a large chunk of cheaters, not all of them, and ultimately it's going to be up to the policy of the server admin as to what to do with them. We just make the tools, you use 'em.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
All these computer games make little children and students play computer instead of doing their homework and learning.
When you get these games in stores for much money, little children can't buy them and must stay at home and learn much.
But with these internet games the situation is changed. Some cost money which is good because little children have no money and can't play these games and must do their homework because parents don't give them any money to play games instead of doing their homework.
But such free games little children will download them for free and play instead of learning so that they don't learn much and stay silly their whole life along.
And parents can't protect them because the games don't cost any money because they are free !!!
This is very bad and causes many uneducated people.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
not to be rude or anything, but WF makes Mozilla look like linux - development is just plain glacial.
a lot of the slowness seems to center around the core design of building dozens of tiny servers to manage each part of the protocol stack, but a large part of it also can be attributed to a lack of clear goals. it seems like no one is really certain what's going to be done and how it's going to get done.
not that there's anything 'wrong' with that, but it's interesting to see the way large products take shape. it seems like the success or failure of most open source projects can be directly correlated to the amount of obsession some central figure has about getting them running.
Indie rock lives! b-side!
Besides, I have exclusive rights on dissin' Worldforge's procrastination, and even I'm sure that one day (2010?) someone is gunna idly say to me "I was playing worldforge last night and.." and I'm just gunna stare blankly at them and say "you were what?" and they'll repeat themselves and I'll say "but it was slow/broken/lame right?" and they'll say "no, it kicks arse man, it's a triumph of open source development" or something and I'm just gunna freak the hell out and start stabbing myself with a fork or something.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Score 2??. Are you on crack. This guy has no clue what Worldforge and Sourceforge is (there is no connection).
Probably no one at slashdot either.
This is a list from a website mirror a couple months old, so you might have a few broken links. But here are some locations where you can get wf code and media without going through the bogged down main page.
o ads Pennsylvania, USA thanks to Dave Turner
n / Pennsylvania, USA thanks to Anders Petersson
Enjoy
_____________________________________________
Main Download Site
The primary worldforge ftp site is at this location:
ftp://victor.worldforge.org/pub/worldforge
Mirror sites are also available at the following locations:
ftp://two.woovis.com/pub/worldforge thanks to James Nugen
http://grimicus.dyndns.org/pub/worldforge/ thanks to Dan Tomalesky
http://kafka.i-site.com/~novalis/mirrors/wf/downl
http://kafka.i-site.com/~novalis/mirrors/wf-debia
http://purple.worldforge.org/wf/downloads/ Colorado, USA thanks to anubis
ftp://ftp.fr.gnome.org/pub/worldforge/ Paris, France thanks to Alexis de Lattre
This is acually our new site so a lot of content hasn't been moved over yet but there is a newb guide there (its more recent than what's on worldforge.org).
d e/
http://moria.mit.edu:8080/wf/project/newbie_gui
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Um, if you're interested in networked applications involving 3D graphics, such as most modern games (including MMORPGS), you might want to check out Verse.
Briefly, Verse is a system (network protocol, client library, and a lightweight server) to make development of such applications easier. It's based on cool tech (such as subdivision surfaces), almost completely free and open (we use GPL, LGPL and BSD licenses), and best of all: not vapor!
Verse has been under development by two full-time developers for over 20 months, so we sure have code. If this sounds interesting, swing by the above SourceForge page and take a look. Thanks.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
# stuck ;;; )
for(
for(;;) {
fork();
}
But I don't quite see what an re-invented and extended VRML has to do with WF ;) :)
Unfortunately, a dedicated 3d protocol doesn't do us all that much good, as our clients all use the same protocol, and vary from text clients to isometric 2d clients and fully-3d clients, which means our protocol has to be 'generic' as possible. I can see the use if we were making a game that was dedicated to 3d only clients, but unfortunately, this is not the case.
That being said... one of us will probably pick it apart to see if there is anything we can use
Rykard
Breaking the Internet one standard at a time, since 1999
...in an open source project with a task as broad as "make an MMORPG", how do you guys decide what KIND of MMORPG to devote your energies to? Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Historical? Western? Horror? Noir? There are so many options.
My question is, what is the decision-making process you folks go through to get all the development troops working on the same code, when some of them want to code in Elves and others want to code in Stormtroopers? And how is/was the Elves vs Stormtroopers decision reached?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Does anyone know specifically where to download the Win32 binaries of the UClient for Acorn? The only place I see win32 mentioned, it points to an ftp site, and I don't see em there.
I'm currently downloading the Linux "Min" ISO. Does anyone know if they're contained on this cd? I hella wanna tryout Acorn but I don't currently have a Linux box/partition running.
I'm not much of a computer gamer, but I do love a weekend session of Dungeons & Dragons with good friends. However, the core group, I used to play with now live all over Europe. We have been looking for software, which could enable us to play together online. However, the few pieces of software, we have found are just too poor.
Someone told me that NeverWinterNights might be what I am seeking with the tools it's being released with. I wouldn't know, but personally I would prefer an open-source piece of software, if it could meet requirements.
What we want is something, which just allows the 7 of us to join up online. We need to role dice, send secret messages, chat, character management, combat situation setup, push pictures (from GM), movement of characters and that the Game Master has total control over all of this. (additional points on the desire list is: webcam conferencing, audio chat and GM controlled background music depending on situation).
Is WorldForge the right direction to look? Is something like this already available using the WF engine? Half the group are coders, so how much work might it take to develop such an app built on WF?
-Kraft
Live and let live
Um.. I think what you need is just your own closed IRC server or channel.
How about www.openrpg.com? The screenshots look pretty cool.
-- juju
GRIP has a server and a client, and it runs an IRC like chat utility, has mapping (including a neat fog of war/visibility capability and maps that reveal as you move through them), GM to group and GM to player interactions, the ability of the GM or players to exchange media, the ability to make requests for die rolls from players, built in dice rolling, and lots of other neat stuff.
My only complaint was a little while back it had some limited capability re: firewalls, but that was being worked on.
Take a gander at Fantasy Realms - Look for the little links at the top to GRIP and iPC.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I'm just going through the acorn screenshots and they are truly slick. What I like most about them - taste. Balance. Realism. Detail.
A big improvement from when I last look in a few months ago, keep it up guys, this is great, it's really getting that professional fit and finish.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
OpenRPG
Open source role playing application - I believe it's written in Python and can run on both Windows and Linux platforms. Offers dice rollers, maps, minature battles, adventure building, chatting, etc. ...
I haven't used it yet, but it seems to work for others and I am planning to give it a try soon ...
AZspot
What we want is something, which just allows the 7 of us to join up online. We need to role dice, send secret messages, chat, character management, combat situation setup, push pictures (from GM), movement of characters and that the Game Master has total control over all of this. (additional points on the desire list is: webcam conferencing, audio chat and GM controlled background music depending on situation).
Is WorldForge the right direction to look? Is something like this already available using the WF engine? Half the group are coders, so how much work might it take to develop such an app built on WF?
WorldForge has a very broad set of ambitions, and in fact what you describe sounds very cool and very much like something we'd want to be able to provide to the world. Some of it can be done via IRC, and in fact WF has done some gaming this way. Our game server STAGE will support being able to do this eventually, but it does not do this yet. Mostly it's just an issue of getting enough folks who are interested in creating it involved in WF. We can teach you how to do it and provide the tools and design ideas to implement it.